It is the most important day in China’s calendar: On October 16, the 20th Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party will convene. Xi Jinping will be elected General Secretary for the third time and abolish term limits. A historic step. But what happens behind the scenes in the Communist Party? As in every political party, the struggle over positions and influence is fierce. Michael Radunski spoke with sinologist Klaus Mühlhahn about the different movements in the CCP, the steep path to the top, and why Xi Jinping has lost political influence, but remains very popular with the public.
After two terms in office, Xi Jinping’s China is at a crossroads. Geopolitical tensions are on the rise, zero-Covid policies and problems in the real estate sector are severely curbing growth and could put the president in a tough spot. In this regard, Xi does not look good, Muehlhahn said. A strategy on how to deal with fundamental problems is not discernible. Nevertheless, the China expert expects the country to open up after the CP congress.
Feeding 1.4 billion people is no small task. A stable food supply has always been a sensitive issue in China. The country has very little agricultural land in relation to its population, and climate change exacerbates the situation even further. Heat waves and droughts threaten this year’s harvests. The state is going on a global shopping spree to feed its population. China already owns food processing plants, land and grain silos in numerous countries. Christiane Kuehl explains how China operates and what implications this has for other countries.
Mr. Mühlhahn, on October 16, the 20th Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party will begin in Beijing. What are the big issues?
Without a doubt, Xi Jinping’s third term in office. That is big. But other questions are actually exciting.
Namely...
What will the new Politburo and the Central Committee look like? There will be an enormous change of personnel everywhere. And heads determine political orientations, after all.
Unfortunately, nothing gets through to the outside world. What does that mean: Great unity in the CCP or fierce battles behind the scenes?
Good question. Two party congresses ago, when Xi Jinping came to power, several names were rumored in public. Xi was obvious, Li Keqiang too. This time, it’s completely different.
Xi is obvious once again. He will remain at the top of the Party.
Yes, absolutely. But you won’t be able to name the new prime minister, will you? And that just a few weeks before the party conference. That is very unusual and has not happened in a long time.
And you skillfully dodged my question: In your view, what is the reason for the secrecy?
So, the date for the party conference is set. That means that the decisions have now been made. Nevertheless, I suspect that there has been fierce internal trench warfare over the individual posts.
Fierce trench warfare – what does that mean for the bigger picture?
This would suggest that Xi Jinping has not been able to simply have his say, and that he is not as unchallenged in the Party as many abroad believe.
If there are no clear indications, but several candidates, the selection process is all the more important. What does this look like?
Tough, very tough. It basically starts before the actual selection process.
Why?
If you want to become somebody in China’s politics, you have a very small window of opportunity. Let’s say you want to get into the Politburo, then you will only be able to manage that in four specific years of your life: You have to be between the end of your fifties and the beginning of your sixties. Otherwise, due to the strict age limit, you won’t be able to serve two terms of five years each.
The pressure for a career politician must be enormous.
And the consequences for the country are also drastic. Because this means: Because of this rule, even in a huge country like China, only very few people are eligible for political leadership. Maybe just a few hundred people. That puts incredible pressure on the people in charge.
And then you also have to get a post. But how?
There are different groups within the Party, each of which is trying to promote their own candidates.
What kind of people are there?
For example, the Chinese Youth League. It is currently prominently represented by Li Keqiang and his associates, for example. Another large group is the princelings, people like Xi Jinping, whose parents already held leadership positions within the Party. There is also the influential Shanghai group. The inland provinces also form a group to coordinate closely with each other and advance their very own interests. And between all these groups, a complicated selection process ensues.
Because of this diversity, it is inconceivable that all members of the Politburo would come from the Shanghai Group, for example, no matter how powerful that alliance might be. So even in such an undemocratic one-party state as China, with strong autocratic tendencies, Xi Jinping must reconcile various interests.
So Xi Jinping is not the much-cited autocrat? When he abolished term limits for himself two years ago, many believed that he was now finally above everything. How has the situation changed since then?
Xi has clearly lost authority and credibility within the Party. And there are two main reasons for this. First, the Covid pandemic has taken an enormous toll on the country. And Xi’s Covid policy has come under a lot of criticism. And second, the economic situation is very tense. Together, these two factors are placing Xi under pressure and overall weakening his position.
Why did Xi abolish term limits in the first place?
Well, that is probably because of how the term limits and age limits are perceived by the leadership itself. You’re only allowed to run twice, and you also have to be around 60 years old to join the leadership. So it stands to reason that such a system would be considered an obstacle. Let’s compare it with America: There, the last two presidents would have dropped out before the selection process. Numerous senators as well. And here in Germany, too, many active politicians would also have to leave.
What are you trying to say: these rules are nonsense?
I did not say that. But you have to acknowledge the official reasoning – and beyond Xi Jinping, it is certainly understood by many in China: In an acute crisis situation, a president should not be removed from office simply because of a bureaucratic rule.
But the repeal only applies to Xi, and not in general.
The constitutional amendment applies not only to Xi, but generally to any future president. Nevertheless, there is a problem here. The arbitrariness with which the amendment was pushed through. Xi apparently believes that there is currently no reliable successor for him. It is very striking that no other candidate has been brought in for this position at all. I think that is the key point: Xi’s conviction of his own irreplaceability.
And you see it that way, too?
Seen as objectively as possible: With Xi Jinping, there is someone at the head of China who leads the country with an insane degree of energy and consistency – this is true even if one does not approve of the direction he currently takes the country. The man has public appointments every day and travels all over the country. Xi manages an insane workload.
That must be part of the job of president.
Not necessarily. This is not true of his predecessor Hu Jintao, for example, who appeared far less in public. And the much-admired Deng Xiaoping spent half of his days in Zhongnanhai playing mahjong. Xi is also very close to the people; indeed, he has almost populist traits. Moreover, he has full control of the huge apparatus. That is astonishing, given the size of the country. Not everyone can do that. From this perspective, it must be said that Xi Jinping is an effective president. That is why he still enjoys strong support among the Chinese population, despite the aforementioned mistakes in the fight against Covid, which are often blamed on lower levels as well.
Wow, you are certainly going to upset some readers with this verdict.
I have to live with that. But of course, there is also my external perspective as a Western foreigner on Xi.
And is it different?
Absolutely. It must be noted that Xi is extremely brutal and aggressive in many areas, such as Xinjiang, Taiwan and Hong Kong. He is taking many and great risks here.
What are the biggest risks for Xi?
At present, it is clearly the poor economic situation. Xi knows that without economic growth, the entire government will be extremely vulnerable – and not just to criticism. After all, that is the deal with the population, which accepts the restriction of political rights for economic growth. If that no longer holds, if banks collapse, if a real estate crisis destroys savings, if people no longer get their money, if prices rise – all of that will put Xi in deep trouble.
And how is he doing?
It has to be said that Xi does not have good solutions in this regard. The impression is that every fire is being put out frantically. But there is no discernible strategy for addressing fundamental problems.
Will geopolitical developments – the rivalry with the USA, the Ukraine war, Taiwan or the South China Sea – play any role at the CP Congress?
Yes, they will – and in many respects. International matters will also play an important role in the selection of candidates, as there is great concern that the current upheavals will increase. In my opinion, there is no scenario in which China does not depend on the world.
Does that mean you expect an opening after the P>arty conference?
Yes. This is also because of the people who are now moving up. Look, Xi Jinping belongs to the last generation that was still affected by the Cultural Revolution. The new guard was born after it. They studied in the liberal 1980s, many of them at Peking University in 1989 when the protests happened. This generation is very differently socialized.
You mentioned 1989. At that time, there was a break in the way foreign countries looked at China – and many Chinese felt that their country was treated unfairly.
True, and that is still true today. That is why I believe the new generation will be more cosmopolitan, but not necessarily less nationalistic. Nationalism was the glue in those years, and it still is today, bridging the tensions and fissures within China. Policy toward the USA will not necessarily improve, but there is a chance for more openness.
In Europe, too, the attitude toward China is currently turning much more critical.
There is nothing wrong with being critical of China. But it is important that we remain in contact even in the current phase – if only to exchange views on differences. The Americans do a much better job of this; despite their verbal posturing, they continue to have intensive confidential talks with the Chinese. Here in Germany, the distrust is currently so great that almost every conversation is interpreted as complicity.
So what does the CP Conference mean for Europe and Germany?
Especially with an eye to the new generation of leaders, I see great opportunities for us Europeans to improve our cooperation. We need dialogue again. Europe cannot afford for China to become a complete Blackbox.
Klaus Muehlhahn is a sinologist, social and cultural scientist. He has been president of Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen since June 2020. His latest books are:
In April, fighting between Ukrainian and Russian soldiers destroyed a sunflower oil mill owned by Chinese food company Cofco Group near the now largely destroyed port city of Mariupol. A Cofco grain terminal in the city of Mykolaiv faced destruction but was ultimately spared. These incidents first revealed to the West how much China has invested in Ukraine’s food industry.
For more than a decade, state-owned and private companies have been on a global buying spree. They buy food processing plants, land and grain silos in numerous countries. Because China, despite all its efforts, cannot feed itself. Demand for food exceeds agricultural production. According to the Japanese newspaper Nikkei Asia, the People’s Republic has to import almost a quarter of its food demand.
Food security has long been a major issue in China, whose agricultural land per capita is far below the global average. Rapid urbanization and industrialization further reduce this area, while the population continues to grow still slightly. According to China’s Ministry of Natural Resources, only 13 percent of China’s land was suitable for agriculture at the end of 2019, down by six percentage points from a decade earlier.
Furthermore, floods, droughts and heat waves have increased due to the climate crisis, rendering harvest volumes less and less reliable. This year is particularly bad: persistent heat and drought in central and southwestern China, coupled with flooding in the northeast, threatening the hundreds of millions of tons of grain harvested this fall. Following an emergency meeting of several ministries in August, a comprehensive package of measures was announced to minimize losses in the fall harvest, including relief funds and the deployment of experts to affected regions (China.Table reported).
Despite these difficulties, food imports are controversial in China, as they contradict Xi Jinping’s claim to minimize dependencies on foreign countries. “The food of the Chinese people must be made by and remain in the hands of the Chinese,” the leader said on state television in December.
On March 6, Xi rejected the notion that global markets could meet his country’s demand, according to a report in a state newspaper. But is Xi’s goal even achievable, considering dwindling arable land and rising demand from a growing middle class? The next best course, from this perspective, is to bring as much food from abroad to China as possible with the help of its own companies. This is where the direct investments of Cofco & Co. come into play.
Since 2014, Cofco has acquired several multinational grain groups. The state-owned group also owns ports, terminals and storage facilities in the world’s major grain-growing regions. In April, Cofco International Brasil announced it was awarded a 25-year concession for a new bulk agricultural terminal at the Brazilian port of Santos. 60 percent of the group’s grain and oilseed assets are located in South America, primarily Argentina and Brazil. From Argentina, Cofco is the largest exporter of grains and oilseeds.
The company is active in many countries: South America, North America and the Black Sea. “In the Black Sea region, we source, store, process and export wheat, corn, barley and oilseeds from Ukraine and Russia,” the group announced before the Ukraine war. The group’s overseas business is worth more than 100 million tons a year, according to Nikkei Asia.
Nikkei cites a few examples of Cofco acquisitions since 2014: Hong Kong’s Nobel Agri, Dutch grain trader Nidera, Criddle & Co.’s grain trading division in the UK, Chilean winery Bisquertt Vineyard and French wine producer Chateau de Viaud, and 80 percent of Australian sugar producer Tully Sugar.
Other companies have also been added to the list: In recent years, for example, Shuanghui International Holdings bought the US meat producer Smithfield Foods. ChemChina, which produces agrochemicals among other things, took over the Swiss company Syngenta, which operates in the same field. Like Cofco, ChemChina is one of the leading companies in its sector in Brazil and Argentina.
Chinese companies, including Cofco and local grain companies, have stepped up their international acquisitions in recent years, Nikkei Asia quoted Hu Bingchuan of the Institute of Rural Development at the state-affiliated Chinese Academy of Social Sciences as saying. “Even without the Ukraine war,” Hu said, “the global food trade is [becoming] increasingly concentrated because only more concentration leads to more efficiency.” In this way, Cofco & Co. are becoming increasingly entrenched in global agricultural supply chains. Cofco, for example, also supplies the EU, with distribution centers in Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, the Netherlands, Romania, Hungary, as well as the United Kingdom and Turkey.
China’s corporations found it more difficult to buy up agricultural land overseas. They encountered resistance in many countries as early as the 1990s. This was mainly because China sent mainly state-controlled companies abroad as part of its “Going-Out” policy – including the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), which have since been placed on the sanctions list of the USA and the EU.
A recent example from the USA: In August, the Senate of the US state of North Dakota debated Senator Mike Rounds’ bill to ban companies with ties to China and other countries from buying land or farms in the USA. It was sparked by the purchase of just over 120 acres of farmland and a corn mill near the small town of Grand Forks in the state by the US subsidiary of private Chinese agribusiness company Fufeng. Due to the proximity of the site to a military installation, the case is now pending before several courts and federal authorities.
Food security is expected to be another issue at the upcoming 20th Party Congress of the Communist Party. China’s plans are of importance for the entire world. For example, Chinese storage facilities are already estimated to hold more than half of the world’s grain and rice reserves. The biggest risk, according to Bloomberg, is that this year’s production shortfalls could exacerbate China’s already high import demand – and thus increase price pressure in the rest of the world. This pressure is already very high due to the Ukraine war and associated supply shortfalls.
Twenty years ago, Rolf Langhammer embarked on a journey. It brought him to China in the early 20th century, a fragmented country ruled by warlords between tradition and cultural renewal. And eventually even to modern Shanghai. He was able to orient himself by using the many traces his grandfather had left behind during his years overseas: Letters from his family in Germany, a passenger list, and a visa. An attic find turned into detective work, and Rolf Langhammer became a genealogist.
Langhammer, 75, was for a long time a professor at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW). His area of expertise includes development and trade issues, particularly in the Asian region. He served as a consultant to several international organizations (EU, World Bank, OECD) as well as to the German Federal Ministries of Economics and Economic Cooperation and Development. Today, Rolf Langhammer is primarily active as an expert witness and in the field of science communication. The fact that there are virtually no research relations between Germany and China troubles him. But despite the many problems, the People’s Republic remains an important focus for him.
Langhammer was just a few months old when his grandfather died. “Fortunately, there are still many postcards from that time,” he says. When the documents surfaced in an attic back then, he went through everything, he researched and bought city maps from back then. He wanted to try to understand who his grandfather was. On the passenger list of the Reichspost steamer “Bayern,” a yellowed piece of paper from 1906, it says: “From Europe to Japan.” One line below: “To Shanghai.” And then: O. J. Langhammer. “That’s him. Oskar Johannes Langhammer. My grandfather,” says Rolf Langhammer.
His grandfather worked for a Hamburg trading company in China for a long time. Import, export. Chinese hair was a particularly sought-after commodity – for the European wig market. From time to time, his grandfather sent dollar bills to relatives in hyperinflation-stricken Germany.
There was no doubt that Langhammer himself would one day travel to Shanghai and follow in his grandfather’s footsteps. He compared the city map from 1930 with a current one, compared street names and house fronts – until in the year 2012, when he found himself standing in front of the house where his grandfather once lived. As vast as the changes in town and country have been, the Art Deco-style house has remained the same. What went through his mind? “How well we are off as a grandchild generation.”
When Langhammer travels to China today, he likes to take his grandfather’s residence permit with him – a document issued by warlord Chen Jiongming in 1920. With a wink, Langhammer says that every border official trembles with awe when presented with the document. Of course, he is joking. But the document finds much attention with his contacts in the country. “Every Chinese I’ve shown it to so far immediately considered me an old friend of China. With your signature and the letter, you walk through an open door in China,” says Langhammer. The Chinese are very traditional. Tim Winter
In your everyday grind, you wander through the crowds in the pedestrian zone or stand in line at the supermarket, bored and typing into your mobile phone … and then this! The back silhouette of a handsome beau or a seductive beauty gets your blood pumping and romantic fantasies rolling. In your mind, you are already searching for a smart flirt punchline, but then: cut. Reality puts you under the cold shower. The tide turns at the very moment when the beautiful stranger turns to you … and turns out to be a bitter disappointment from the front.
Has that ever happened to you? Next time you share a story like this, you won’t have to dig around in the word box for long. Because in Chinese, there’s an appropriate term for this exact scenario. 背影杀 bèiyǐngshā-literally “back silhouette murder” (from 背bèi “back,” 影 yǐng “shadow, silhouette,” and杀 shā “murder, kill”) is the magic word. In three syllables, it sums up exactly what takes a complete sentence in English (and probably in most other languages as well): An encounter with a man/woman who only looks good from behind. And Chinese also has its own name for the described protagonists who turned around and stabbed romantic fantasies in the back, namely 背影杀手bèiyǐng shāshǒu – back view killer.
By the way, in Chinese slang, other such “killers” lie in wait for us with sophisticated murder tools or murderous strategies that bring love at second sight to an abrupt end. The Chinese have also created a clever vocabulary for them.
In the profiling of visual offenders, the Chinese language, for example, speaks of the middle parting killer (中分杀手 zhōngfēn shāshǒu). This refers to – mostly female – individuals who purposefully part their long hair with an accurate center parting (中分刘海 zhōngfēn liúhǎi) in such a way that the hair covers a large part of the outer cheek area, giving the appearance of a narrow face – and this is considered the ideal of beauty in China.
Another villain also uses a hairstyle trick, namely the bangs killer (刘海杀手 liúhǎi shāshǒu). This fashionable trick skillfully hides an unsightly or blemished forehead area, thus fooling the viewer into believing in flawless beauty in photos or in person. Unfortunately, the ultimate enemy for bangs killers are unexpected gusts of wind, but that is only by the by. And: Middle parting and bangs murder can of course also be perfectly combined for serial murder – i.e. double application. But that is only something for professional killers.
The list of wanted criminals of the beauty police also includes the sunglasses murder (墨镜杀mòjìngshā). Here, black panda eye rings after drunken all-nighters or low-hanging bags under the eyes found at the bottom of a bottle, are covered up by darkened glasses, thus feigning youthful freshness. Cybercrime, on the other hand, includes the perfidious tricks of the selfie killers (自拍杀手 zìpāi shāshǒu), who are such masters of digital filters and image editing that they give us a rude awakening in the on/offline comparison when we first see them in real life. And since Covid at the latest, the mouth and nose mask killer (口罩杀手 kǒuzhào shāshǒu) also causes the occasional reality shock when new acquaintances lasciviously take off their masks for the first time and put a bullet in our face in the metaphorical sense.
As it sometimes happens in criminal investigations, our murderous linguistic story even takes a surprising semantic turn at the end. Recently, the “back view kill” has also been used as a compliment! Chinese linguistic artists now often do not care whether a perfect back actually conceals a similarly adorable face. 背影杀bèiyǐngshā is therefore also used as a compliment, when the perfect back view is already so stunning that we no longer care about the front. In China, 背影杀bèiyǐngshā is now even the eponym for its own genre of photography, which focuses on charming back views. Related terms have also become the “smilekiller” (微笑杀wēixiàoshā) – someone, who uses an irresistible smile to charm the world around them – as well as the “profile killers”- fellow human beings or celebrities with an irresistible facial profile (侧颜杀 cèyánshā) and an unbeatable side silhouette (侧影杀 cèyǐngshā).
But maybe we shouldn’t make such a big fuss about everyone’s looks. After all, everyone has their good side – it is all just a matter of perspective.
Verena Menzel runs the online language school New Chinese in Beijing.
It is the most important day in China’s calendar: On October 16, the 20th Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party will convene. Xi Jinping will be elected General Secretary for the third time and abolish term limits. A historic step. But what happens behind the scenes in the Communist Party? As in every political party, the struggle over positions and influence is fierce. Michael Radunski spoke with sinologist Klaus Mühlhahn about the different movements in the CCP, the steep path to the top, and why Xi Jinping has lost political influence, but remains very popular with the public.
After two terms in office, Xi Jinping’s China is at a crossroads. Geopolitical tensions are on the rise, zero-Covid policies and problems in the real estate sector are severely curbing growth and could put the president in a tough spot. In this regard, Xi does not look good, Muehlhahn said. A strategy on how to deal with fundamental problems is not discernible. Nevertheless, the China expert expects the country to open up after the CP congress.
Feeding 1.4 billion people is no small task. A stable food supply has always been a sensitive issue in China. The country has very little agricultural land in relation to its population, and climate change exacerbates the situation even further. Heat waves and droughts threaten this year’s harvests. The state is going on a global shopping spree to feed its population. China already owns food processing plants, land and grain silos in numerous countries. Christiane Kuehl explains how China operates and what implications this has for other countries.
Mr. Mühlhahn, on October 16, the 20th Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party will begin in Beijing. What are the big issues?
Without a doubt, Xi Jinping’s third term in office. That is big. But other questions are actually exciting.
Namely...
What will the new Politburo and the Central Committee look like? There will be an enormous change of personnel everywhere. And heads determine political orientations, after all.
Unfortunately, nothing gets through to the outside world. What does that mean: Great unity in the CCP or fierce battles behind the scenes?
Good question. Two party congresses ago, when Xi Jinping came to power, several names were rumored in public. Xi was obvious, Li Keqiang too. This time, it’s completely different.
Xi is obvious once again. He will remain at the top of the Party.
Yes, absolutely. But you won’t be able to name the new prime minister, will you? And that just a few weeks before the party conference. That is very unusual and has not happened in a long time.
And you skillfully dodged my question: In your view, what is the reason for the secrecy?
So, the date for the party conference is set. That means that the decisions have now been made. Nevertheless, I suspect that there has been fierce internal trench warfare over the individual posts.
Fierce trench warfare – what does that mean for the bigger picture?
This would suggest that Xi Jinping has not been able to simply have his say, and that he is not as unchallenged in the Party as many abroad believe.
If there are no clear indications, but several candidates, the selection process is all the more important. What does this look like?
Tough, very tough. It basically starts before the actual selection process.
Why?
If you want to become somebody in China’s politics, you have a very small window of opportunity. Let’s say you want to get into the Politburo, then you will only be able to manage that in four specific years of your life: You have to be between the end of your fifties and the beginning of your sixties. Otherwise, due to the strict age limit, you won’t be able to serve two terms of five years each.
The pressure for a career politician must be enormous.
And the consequences for the country are also drastic. Because this means: Because of this rule, even in a huge country like China, only very few people are eligible for political leadership. Maybe just a few hundred people. That puts incredible pressure on the people in charge.
And then you also have to get a post. But how?
There are different groups within the Party, each of which is trying to promote their own candidates.
What kind of people are there?
For example, the Chinese Youth League. It is currently prominently represented by Li Keqiang and his associates, for example. Another large group is the princelings, people like Xi Jinping, whose parents already held leadership positions within the Party. There is also the influential Shanghai group. The inland provinces also form a group to coordinate closely with each other and advance their very own interests. And between all these groups, a complicated selection process ensues.
Because of this diversity, it is inconceivable that all members of the Politburo would come from the Shanghai Group, for example, no matter how powerful that alliance might be. So even in such an undemocratic one-party state as China, with strong autocratic tendencies, Xi Jinping must reconcile various interests.
So Xi Jinping is not the much-cited autocrat? When he abolished term limits for himself two years ago, many believed that he was now finally above everything. How has the situation changed since then?
Xi has clearly lost authority and credibility within the Party. And there are two main reasons for this. First, the Covid pandemic has taken an enormous toll on the country. And Xi’s Covid policy has come under a lot of criticism. And second, the economic situation is very tense. Together, these two factors are placing Xi under pressure and overall weakening his position.
Why did Xi abolish term limits in the first place?
Well, that is probably because of how the term limits and age limits are perceived by the leadership itself. You’re only allowed to run twice, and you also have to be around 60 years old to join the leadership. So it stands to reason that such a system would be considered an obstacle. Let’s compare it with America: There, the last two presidents would have dropped out before the selection process. Numerous senators as well. And here in Germany, too, many active politicians would also have to leave.
What are you trying to say: these rules are nonsense?
I did not say that. But you have to acknowledge the official reasoning – and beyond Xi Jinping, it is certainly understood by many in China: In an acute crisis situation, a president should not be removed from office simply because of a bureaucratic rule.
But the repeal only applies to Xi, and not in general.
The constitutional amendment applies not only to Xi, but generally to any future president. Nevertheless, there is a problem here. The arbitrariness with which the amendment was pushed through. Xi apparently believes that there is currently no reliable successor for him. It is very striking that no other candidate has been brought in for this position at all. I think that is the key point: Xi’s conviction of his own irreplaceability.
And you see it that way, too?
Seen as objectively as possible: With Xi Jinping, there is someone at the head of China who leads the country with an insane degree of energy and consistency – this is true even if one does not approve of the direction he currently takes the country. The man has public appointments every day and travels all over the country. Xi manages an insane workload.
That must be part of the job of president.
Not necessarily. This is not true of his predecessor Hu Jintao, for example, who appeared far less in public. And the much-admired Deng Xiaoping spent half of his days in Zhongnanhai playing mahjong. Xi is also very close to the people; indeed, he has almost populist traits. Moreover, he has full control of the huge apparatus. That is astonishing, given the size of the country. Not everyone can do that. From this perspective, it must be said that Xi Jinping is an effective president. That is why he still enjoys strong support among the Chinese population, despite the aforementioned mistakes in the fight against Covid, which are often blamed on lower levels as well.
Wow, you are certainly going to upset some readers with this verdict.
I have to live with that. But of course, there is also my external perspective as a Western foreigner on Xi.
And is it different?
Absolutely. It must be noted that Xi is extremely brutal and aggressive in many areas, such as Xinjiang, Taiwan and Hong Kong. He is taking many and great risks here.
What are the biggest risks for Xi?
At present, it is clearly the poor economic situation. Xi knows that without economic growth, the entire government will be extremely vulnerable – and not just to criticism. After all, that is the deal with the population, which accepts the restriction of political rights for economic growth. If that no longer holds, if banks collapse, if a real estate crisis destroys savings, if people no longer get their money, if prices rise – all of that will put Xi in deep trouble.
And how is he doing?
It has to be said that Xi does not have good solutions in this regard. The impression is that every fire is being put out frantically. But there is no discernible strategy for addressing fundamental problems.
Will geopolitical developments – the rivalry with the USA, the Ukraine war, Taiwan or the South China Sea – play any role at the CP Congress?
Yes, they will – and in many respects. International matters will also play an important role in the selection of candidates, as there is great concern that the current upheavals will increase. In my opinion, there is no scenario in which China does not depend on the world.
Does that mean you expect an opening after the P>arty conference?
Yes. This is also because of the people who are now moving up. Look, Xi Jinping belongs to the last generation that was still affected by the Cultural Revolution. The new guard was born after it. They studied in the liberal 1980s, many of them at Peking University in 1989 when the protests happened. This generation is very differently socialized.
You mentioned 1989. At that time, there was a break in the way foreign countries looked at China – and many Chinese felt that their country was treated unfairly.
True, and that is still true today. That is why I believe the new generation will be more cosmopolitan, but not necessarily less nationalistic. Nationalism was the glue in those years, and it still is today, bridging the tensions and fissures within China. Policy toward the USA will not necessarily improve, but there is a chance for more openness.
In Europe, too, the attitude toward China is currently turning much more critical.
There is nothing wrong with being critical of China. But it is important that we remain in contact even in the current phase – if only to exchange views on differences. The Americans do a much better job of this; despite their verbal posturing, they continue to have intensive confidential talks with the Chinese. Here in Germany, the distrust is currently so great that almost every conversation is interpreted as complicity.
So what does the CP Conference mean for Europe and Germany?
Especially with an eye to the new generation of leaders, I see great opportunities for us Europeans to improve our cooperation. We need dialogue again. Europe cannot afford for China to become a complete Blackbox.
Klaus Muehlhahn is a sinologist, social and cultural scientist. He has been president of Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen since June 2020. His latest books are:
In April, fighting between Ukrainian and Russian soldiers destroyed a sunflower oil mill owned by Chinese food company Cofco Group near the now largely destroyed port city of Mariupol. A Cofco grain terminal in the city of Mykolaiv faced destruction but was ultimately spared. These incidents first revealed to the West how much China has invested in Ukraine’s food industry.
For more than a decade, state-owned and private companies have been on a global buying spree. They buy food processing plants, land and grain silos in numerous countries. Because China, despite all its efforts, cannot feed itself. Demand for food exceeds agricultural production. According to the Japanese newspaper Nikkei Asia, the People’s Republic has to import almost a quarter of its food demand.
Food security has long been a major issue in China, whose agricultural land per capita is far below the global average. Rapid urbanization and industrialization further reduce this area, while the population continues to grow still slightly. According to China’s Ministry of Natural Resources, only 13 percent of China’s land was suitable for agriculture at the end of 2019, down by six percentage points from a decade earlier.
Furthermore, floods, droughts and heat waves have increased due to the climate crisis, rendering harvest volumes less and less reliable. This year is particularly bad: persistent heat and drought in central and southwestern China, coupled with flooding in the northeast, threatening the hundreds of millions of tons of grain harvested this fall. Following an emergency meeting of several ministries in August, a comprehensive package of measures was announced to minimize losses in the fall harvest, including relief funds and the deployment of experts to affected regions (China.Table reported).
Despite these difficulties, food imports are controversial in China, as they contradict Xi Jinping’s claim to minimize dependencies on foreign countries. “The food of the Chinese people must be made by and remain in the hands of the Chinese,” the leader said on state television in December.
On March 6, Xi rejected the notion that global markets could meet his country’s demand, according to a report in a state newspaper. But is Xi’s goal even achievable, considering dwindling arable land and rising demand from a growing middle class? The next best course, from this perspective, is to bring as much food from abroad to China as possible with the help of its own companies. This is where the direct investments of Cofco & Co. come into play.
Since 2014, Cofco has acquired several multinational grain groups. The state-owned group also owns ports, terminals and storage facilities in the world’s major grain-growing regions. In April, Cofco International Brasil announced it was awarded a 25-year concession for a new bulk agricultural terminal at the Brazilian port of Santos. 60 percent of the group’s grain and oilseed assets are located in South America, primarily Argentina and Brazil. From Argentina, Cofco is the largest exporter of grains and oilseeds.
The company is active in many countries: South America, North America and the Black Sea. “In the Black Sea region, we source, store, process and export wheat, corn, barley and oilseeds from Ukraine and Russia,” the group announced before the Ukraine war. The group’s overseas business is worth more than 100 million tons a year, according to Nikkei Asia.
Nikkei cites a few examples of Cofco acquisitions since 2014: Hong Kong’s Nobel Agri, Dutch grain trader Nidera, Criddle & Co.’s grain trading division in the UK, Chilean winery Bisquertt Vineyard and French wine producer Chateau de Viaud, and 80 percent of Australian sugar producer Tully Sugar.
Other companies have also been added to the list: In recent years, for example, Shuanghui International Holdings bought the US meat producer Smithfield Foods. ChemChina, which produces agrochemicals among other things, took over the Swiss company Syngenta, which operates in the same field. Like Cofco, ChemChina is one of the leading companies in its sector in Brazil and Argentina.
Chinese companies, including Cofco and local grain companies, have stepped up their international acquisitions in recent years, Nikkei Asia quoted Hu Bingchuan of the Institute of Rural Development at the state-affiliated Chinese Academy of Social Sciences as saying. “Even without the Ukraine war,” Hu said, “the global food trade is [becoming] increasingly concentrated because only more concentration leads to more efficiency.” In this way, Cofco & Co. are becoming increasingly entrenched in global agricultural supply chains. Cofco, for example, also supplies the EU, with distribution centers in Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, the Netherlands, Romania, Hungary, as well as the United Kingdom and Turkey.
China’s corporations found it more difficult to buy up agricultural land overseas. They encountered resistance in many countries as early as the 1990s. This was mainly because China sent mainly state-controlled companies abroad as part of its “Going-Out” policy – including the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), which have since been placed on the sanctions list of the USA and the EU.
A recent example from the USA: In August, the Senate of the US state of North Dakota debated Senator Mike Rounds’ bill to ban companies with ties to China and other countries from buying land or farms in the USA. It was sparked by the purchase of just over 120 acres of farmland and a corn mill near the small town of Grand Forks in the state by the US subsidiary of private Chinese agribusiness company Fufeng. Due to the proximity of the site to a military installation, the case is now pending before several courts and federal authorities.
Food security is expected to be another issue at the upcoming 20th Party Congress of the Communist Party. China’s plans are of importance for the entire world. For example, Chinese storage facilities are already estimated to hold more than half of the world’s grain and rice reserves. The biggest risk, according to Bloomberg, is that this year’s production shortfalls could exacerbate China’s already high import demand – and thus increase price pressure in the rest of the world. This pressure is already very high due to the Ukraine war and associated supply shortfalls.
Twenty years ago, Rolf Langhammer embarked on a journey. It brought him to China in the early 20th century, a fragmented country ruled by warlords between tradition and cultural renewal. And eventually even to modern Shanghai. He was able to orient himself by using the many traces his grandfather had left behind during his years overseas: Letters from his family in Germany, a passenger list, and a visa. An attic find turned into detective work, and Rolf Langhammer became a genealogist.
Langhammer, 75, was for a long time a professor at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW). His area of expertise includes development and trade issues, particularly in the Asian region. He served as a consultant to several international organizations (EU, World Bank, OECD) as well as to the German Federal Ministries of Economics and Economic Cooperation and Development. Today, Rolf Langhammer is primarily active as an expert witness and in the field of science communication. The fact that there are virtually no research relations between Germany and China troubles him. But despite the many problems, the People’s Republic remains an important focus for him.
Langhammer was just a few months old when his grandfather died. “Fortunately, there are still many postcards from that time,” he says. When the documents surfaced in an attic back then, he went through everything, he researched and bought city maps from back then. He wanted to try to understand who his grandfather was. On the passenger list of the Reichspost steamer “Bayern,” a yellowed piece of paper from 1906, it says: “From Europe to Japan.” One line below: “To Shanghai.” And then: O. J. Langhammer. “That’s him. Oskar Johannes Langhammer. My grandfather,” says Rolf Langhammer.
His grandfather worked for a Hamburg trading company in China for a long time. Import, export. Chinese hair was a particularly sought-after commodity – for the European wig market. From time to time, his grandfather sent dollar bills to relatives in hyperinflation-stricken Germany.
There was no doubt that Langhammer himself would one day travel to Shanghai and follow in his grandfather’s footsteps. He compared the city map from 1930 with a current one, compared street names and house fronts – until in the year 2012, when he found himself standing in front of the house where his grandfather once lived. As vast as the changes in town and country have been, the Art Deco-style house has remained the same. What went through his mind? “How well we are off as a grandchild generation.”
When Langhammer travels to China today, he likes to take his grandfather’s residence permit with him – a document issued by warlord Chen Jiongming in 1920. With a wink, Langhammer says that every border official trembles with awe when presented with the document. Of course, he is joking. But the document finds much attention with his contacts in the country. “Every Chinese I’ve shown it to so far immediately considered me an old friend of China. With your signature and the letter, you walk through an open door in China,” says Langhammer. The Chinese are very traditional. Tim Winter
In your everyday grind, you wander through the crowds in the pedestrian zone or stand in line at the supermarket, bored and typing into your mobile phone … and then this! The back silhouette of a handsome beau or a seductive beauty gets your blood pumping and romantic fantasies rolling. In your mind, you are already searching for a smart flirt punchline, but then: cut. Reality puts you under the cold shower. The tide turns at the very moment when the beautiful stranger turns to you … and turns out to be a bitter disappointment from the front.
Has that ever happened to you? Next time you share a story like this, you won’t have to dig around in the word box for long. Because in Chinese, there’s an appropriate term for this exact scenario. 背影杀 bèiyǐngshā-literally “back silhouette murder” (from 背bèi “back,” 影 yǐng “shadow, silhouette,” and杀 shā “murder, kill”) is the magic word. In three syllables, it sums up exactly what takes a complete sentence in English (and probably in most other languages as well): An encounter with a man/woman who only looks good from behind. And Chinese also has its own name for the described protagonists who turned around and stabbed romantic fantasies in the back, namely 背影杀手bèiyǐng shāshǒu – back view killer.
By the way, in Chinese slang, other such “killers” lie in wait for us with sophisticated murder tools or murderous strategies that bring love at second sight to an abrupt end. The Chinese have also created a clever vocabulary for them.
In the profiling of visual offenders, the Chinese language, for example, speaks of the middle parting killer (中分杀手 zhōngfēn shāshǒu). This refers to – mostly female – individuals who purposefully part their long hair with an accurate center parting (中分刘海 zhōngfēn liúhǎi) in such a way that the hair covers a large part of the outer cheek area, giving the appearance of a narrow face – and this is considered the ideal of beauty in China.
Another villain also uses a hairstyle trick, namely the bangs killer (刘海杀手 liúhǎi shāshǒu). This fashionable trick skillfully hides an unsightly or blemished forehead area, thus fooling the viewer into believing in flawless beauty in photos or in person. Unfortunately, the ultimate enemy for bangs killers are unexpected gusts of wind, but that is only by the by. And: Middle parting and bangs murder can of course also be perfectly combined for serial murder – i.e. double application. But that is only something for professional killers.
The list of wanted criminals of the beauty police also includes the sunglasses murder (墨镜杀mòjìngshā). Here, black panda eye rings after drunken all-nighters or low-hanging bags under the eyes found at the bottom of a bottle, are covered up by darkened glasses, thus feigning youthful freshness. Cybercrime, on the other hand, includes the perfidious tricks of the selfie killers (自拍杀手 zìpāi shāshǒu), who are such masters of digital filters and image editing that they give us a rude awakening in the on/offline comparison when we first see them in real life. And since Covid at the latest, the mouth and nose mask killer (口罩杀手 kǒuzhào shāshǒu) also causes the occasional reality shock when new acquaintances lasciviously take off their masks for the first time and put a bullet in our face in the metaphorical sense.
As it sometimes happens in criminal investigations, our murderous linguistic story even takes a surprising semantic turn at the end. Recently, the “back view kill” has also been used as a compliment! Chinese linguistic artists now often do not care whether a perfect back actually conceals a similarly adorable face. 背影杀bèiyǐngshā is therefore also used as a compliment, when the perfect back view is already so stunning that we no longer care about the front. In China, 背影杀bèiyǐngshā is now even the eponym for its own genre of photography, which focuses on charming back views. Related terms have also become the “smilekiller” (微笑杀wēixiàoshā) – someone, who uses an irresistible smile to charm the world around them – as well as the “profile killers”- fellow human beings or celebrities with an irresistible facial profile (侧颜杀 cèyánshā) and an unbeatable side silhouette (侧影杀 cèyǐngshā).
But maybe we shouldn’t make such a big fuss about everyone’s looks. After all, everyone has their good side – it is all just a matter of perspective.
Verena Menzel runs the online language school New Chinese in Beijing.
